High school, elementary teachers poised to strike

On the heels of Friday's expected strike by local elementary school teachers, secondary school educators have also announced plans to walk off the job next week.

Speaking to this newspaper on Thursday, Jan. 10, Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) Trillium Lakelands local president Peter Caroll confirmed Muskoka’s high school teachers will walk off the job next Wednesday, Jan. 16, unless an agreement can be reached with the province.

“Next Wednesday, on a provincewide basis, the members of OSSTF will be withdrawing their services to protest against the government taking away our collective bargaining rights and imposing collective agreements upon us,” he said.

With teachers no longer in a legal strike position, Premier Dalton McGuinty declared any walkouts illegal, and urged them to reconsider their direction in a statement posted on his Facebook page. He headed into an Ontario Labour Relations Board meeting on Thursday afternoon in the hopes that the dispute could be resolved peacefully. At press time, all indications pointed to a looming strike.

“On behalf of Ontario parents and students alike, it is our full expectation that teachers will be in school on Friday and every day in keeping with their employment obligations,” he said in his statement.

In a release received by this newspaper just minutes before press time, OSSTF president Ken Coran said that should a strike go ahead, pickets by union members could hit school board or MPP offices.

OSSTF members decided on a strike after an all-day meeting in Toronto on Wednesday, Jan. 9. Caroll said the strike would go ahead unless the province reneges on the contracts it has imposed on teachers.

The OSSTF strike was announced shortly after the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) planned its own one-day walkout for today, (Friday, Jan. 11), sending parents across Muskoka scrambling to find last-minute childcare options.

The planned elementary teachers’ strike included Muskoka’s 41 public elementary schools and over 1,000 full and part-time teachers. About 92 per cent of 46,000 ETFO members voted to approve the strike last month if the province began imposing contracts on them, which it did a few weeks earlier.

With the elementary strike announced just two days prior, staff at the Bracebridge Sportsplex responded swiftly by calling in staff and part-time instructors to host a special day camp for grade school students in the event that teachers did walk off the job.

“We’re really here to accommodate parents’ working schedules so they don’t have to miss work,” said Sportsplex youth recreational programmer Diane Wiber.

Planned activities for the camp include rock climbing, pool activities and Dance Dance Revolution for children up to the age of 12. For a fee of about $28, parents could drop their children off as early as 7:30 a.m., with evening pickup as late as 6 p.m.

The Sportsplex had offered a similar day camp service when elementary teachers last walked off the job in mid-December, drawing about 15 children. Speaking to this newspaper on Thursday, Jan. 10, Wiber said she had expected similar or even greater numbers of children to be dropped off today.

Wiber said the day camp was well received by area parents during the last strike.

“Knowing that the recreation department was there to support parents when they have these last-minute issues pop up, we find that they were very appreciative that we were able to put a program together in short notice,” she said.

Similar programs were not offered by the Centennial Centre and YMCA in Gravenhurst. However, YWCA Muskoka reported that Just 4 Kicks dance academy was organizing special child care for parents that would be affected by a strike.

Despite staff’s best efforts in Huntsville, programmer Simone Babineau said the town’s Summit Centre was unable to pull together an emergency PA Day camp in preparation. The staff who run those camps, she said, are high school students who couldn’t be called away from their own classes.

“That’s really my only challenge – we’d love to do it but it’s really just a staffing challenge,” she said. “Because they aren’t off on the same day, I don’t have them to call in.”

She said Summit Centre had a similar staffing problem during the last strike.

“They’re great leaders and they’re keen to do it, they just don’t happen to be off on the same day, and I don’t want to pull them out of school,” she said.

The looming strike also threatened to shut down before and after-school care programs at all Muskoka Family Focus and Children’s Place locations, along with the Early Years program at Huntsville Public School.

Trillium Lakelands District School Board (TLDSB) spokesperson Catherine Shedden had issued a statement on Wednesday advising parents to make alternative childcare arrangements just in case.

“This announcement has come as a surprise, but it was certainly not unexpected,” said TLDSB school board chair Karen Round. “We understand that our local unions as well as their provincial colleagues are deeply concerned about the government’s decision to impose contracts on them as of December 31.”

ETFO president Sam Hammond issued a release on Wednesday saying the planned strike is aimed “squarely at the government and education minister,” and not the local school boards.
“The minister made a deliberate and provocative choice to wipe out the democratic rights of tens of thousands of educators rather than work towards a respectful solution,” he said. “She could have take our olive branch and waited for a new leader to try and find solutions, but she chose not to.”

Leaders of the ETFO Trillium Lakelands local could not be reached by press time.

Relations between the union representing school support staff and the province appear to be much smoother. Members of the Trillium Lakelands Canadian Union of Public Employees local will be ratifying a tentative agreement with the province in Minden over the weekend.

For more updates on the strike situation, please check our website at www.cottagecountrynow.ca.